1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to methods and apparatus for displaying various samples of fabric and the like materials in a display sheet or book-like catalog format. Manufacturers in an increasing variety of different industries offer a large number of products such as paints, inks, coatings and fabric materials each of which vary by color, surface texture, durability or which differ in other respects, with different groupings cutting across entire product lines. For example, manufacturers of decorating products offer an entire range of colors in several product "families" such as flat, semi-gloss or high gloss paint finishes. Frequently, it is difficult for potential customers to select the precise color within a product family, especially since color perception differs with different lighting conditions and surrounding environments. Accordingly, it is important that a user be able to obtain samples of the products of interest for comparison at a remote location removed from the manufacturers' premises. The present invention is concerned with the manufacture of such sample sheets.
Manufacturers of sample products are frequently called upon to produce a wide variety of products to sample size or to emulate the products in specially fabricated samples which are mounted to a suitable display medium such as a sheet of relatively stiff card stock. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,521, has been practiced successfully in the production of swatch bearing sheets, with the swatches arranged in an array on a backing card for ready visual selection.
Frequently, the same machine, even within the course of a business day, may be required to construct display sheets of sample materials having widely different sizes. The apparatus of U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,521 can be readily adapted for swatches of varying sizes and array configurations. For example, many color charts produced today for the paint industry are manufactured by coating sheets of paper with the desired colors and severing the coated sheets with a cutter apparatus to form narrow strips. The narrow strips are then cut down to the size of a desired swatch. The swatches are then picked and placed on a backing sheet and secured thereto with an adhesive.
Such coated sheets are relatively impervious and the various vacuum transport systems of U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,521 perform high speed operations with a high level of efficiency. However, as will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, there are certain materials which are not coated onto a substrate and which cannot be easily emulated with a similar-appearing display swatch. Such materials for example include fabrics of cloth or plastic or composite materials which typically are cut from a large bolt to form samples typically of the order of several inches in square area. If a fabric material is porous enough, a substantial drop in vacuum or (i.e., negative pressure) may be experienced. It is necessary, in such situations, to secure a backing medium to the samples. For example, fabric samples may be mounted to a sheet of relatively impervious backing material made of plastic, paper or the like. This however has a disadvantage of increasing the cost of the sample sheet being produced and adds another step in the sample manufacturing process. It is desirable to eliminate as many steps in the fabrication process as is possible, without sacrificing the quality of the sample assembly being produced.